


A Collage of Eternal Moments

by Procrastinating_Dragonfly



Category: VICTON (Band)
Genre: A few moments of fluff, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, All the sad stuff, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Break Up, Immortality, Loss, M/M, Time Skips, the ending is not happy either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25157782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Procrastinating_Dragonfly/pseuds/Procrastinating_Dragonfly
Summary: Sejun is 857 years old, and tired of losing his loved ones.
Relationships: Choi Byungchan/Im Sejun, Do Hanse/Im Sejun, Han Seungwoo/Im Sejun, Heo Chan/Im Sejun, Im Sejun/Everyone, Im Sejun/Jung Subin, Im Sejun/Kang Seungsik
Comments: 21
Kudos: 73
Collections: Lucky 7 Victon





	A Collage of Eternal Moments

**Author's Note:**

> This is a submission for the Lucky 7 Victon ficfest! The original prompt for this was #167: _Sejun is 857 years old and tired of seeing his loved ones die_. 
> 
> Further warnings include: some depictions of gore, lots of war in Seungsik and Byungchan's parts, definitely lots of death, heartbreak, all the like. The settings of this fic are: Goryeo, the war that preceded the Joseon dynasty, Joseon court, 1800s Europe, Japan-occupied Korea, and modern South Korea. The intention behind this fic is purely fictional, and is not an accurate historical representation, because your author procrastinated too much. 
> 
> Please enjoy the fic!

_ Goryeo, 1238 _

Sejun realizes he is cursed for the first time when he’s holding his beloved’s cold hand in his own.

He had known this moment would come for a long time. He’d realized, vaguely, the first time they went to the river together after the nefarious prophecy; just two boys, barely grown, sneaking away to hide from the world. Their town couldn’t find them here, skipping across the river, uncontained laughter running through the air to hide in the forest. Sejun remembers it vividly, his trousers rolled up and still soaked with freezing freshwater, their jewelry bundled up and left ashore, lest they lose it to the currents, trudging through the water to chase Chan. 

He had caught up, trapped the boy in his arms, ready to hoist him up and throw him into the water. Instead, Chan had turned around, sealing their lips in a traitor kiss, then laughed, loud and happy, as he took advantage of Sejun’s surprise to trip him.

It was the sudden hit of cold water, the momentary feeling of drowning, that made him realize. Chan’s laughter echoed in his ears, even past the barrier of the river’s surface, and Sejun realized, for the first time, that one day he would lose it. 

He had suppressed the idea immediately, back then, resurfacing with the intent to fight; yet throughout the years, the small moments of realization piled up. Chan, of course, got married to a lovely young lady, as was expected. He’d been there with Sejun, the first time he broke into the temple, young and stupid, and the shaman he had defied told him he would never be able to die or grow older, so he never questioned why Sejun never seemed to change. But he noticed, as did Sejun, that Chan’s own hand grew so much frailer, that his skin drooped with the weight of the years, his hair became whiter and whiter, his bones growing tired. 

Throughout out all it, Sejun remained immaculate. Forever twenty-two, until he had to leave and seclude himself in neighbouring towns to avoid suspicion, until rumours piled on rumours and he hid away in the isolation of the temple. 

The monk who cursed him was long gone, yet he could feel the spite radiating off of every idol that had witnessed his childish arrogance, every inch of wood he had desecrated. The other inhabitants of the temple allowed him to stay. They never asked questions; a small miracle of mercy.

Sejun would have been seventy-five when the messenger came running to summon him to Chan’s village. 

It’s his first punishment, and the most cruel one. Holding Chan’s hand in his own is the seal of his sentence, drooping skin and death-like limpness reminding him that he, too, should be with him, on their deathbeds, as brothers in the eyes of everyone and loved ones in their heart. He isn’t given the mercy of Chan saying his goodbyes, either; his breathing is feeble, his eyes unfocused, glazed over, to the point where Sejun almost thinks he might be already dead. 

Sejun has, in all his years, always run from death. All of his instincts scream at him to run now, too, and not witness any part of his first and only love take his last breath and go rigid, but he forces himself to stay still and keep holding Chan’s hand even when he stops breathing. He owes it to him. 

No one ever tells death how it is. 

No one talks about the stench of urine and feces, the distorted grimaces the face is contorted into. Sejun waits, with bated breath, for Chan to move. For some spell to happen. A wake-up, a reset of the universe, a reincarnation, a vision, a rush of air when he surfaces from the water and Chan is there to laugh with him. 

Nothing happens. Sejun sits, Chan’s grip on his hand iron, now, and waits. 

He waits until he’s escorted out. When he’s back in his home, alone in the silence of his four walls, he runs to the altar and prostrates himself, with no heart to speak, but hoping someone will listen and not abandon him, alone for another lifetime all over again. 

There’s never an answer to his prayers. 

Sejun is 75, and he realizes he is cursed. 

* * *

_ Goryeo, 1387 _

Their nation is going to collapse. 

Sejun never saw it coming. He doesn’t think anyone really did, no matter what the hushed voices whispered at nightfall. The disorder stacked, the wars erupted, voices of powerful people fighting for the control of their country made it all the way to the outskirts of where Sejun was hiding. 

Sejun answers to the call. He can’t die in combat, can’t become another of the many corpses he finds, strewn about on the fields. He takes up arms, and fights for his nation. 

He soon loses track of who he’s fighting for, the tides of war surprisingly fickle. Whatever comes his way, as long as he can protect the people and their rights, he fights for. He gets injured, and laughs when his fellow combatants tell him he is definitely going to die very, very soon. 

The first time a sword pierces clean through his heart, he almost hopes they’re right. 

He wakes up, of course, like every other time, a concerned face blinking above him. 

“Hah!” the man laughs, rushing to hold him down in case Sejun tries to get up. As if he had the strength for it, right now. “I’ll be damned. You lived.” 

Sejun stares, dumbfounded. Somehow, he nods, something the man must like, because he smiles even brighter.

“Seungsik,” he introduces himself, freeing Sejun from his weight. 

Seungsik is not a doctor. Not officially. Sejun gets to know him over the spare food they pull together for dinner. Much like Sejun himself, he picked up the tools he could find and ran to action, serving the people as best as he could. Sejun laughs wholeheartedly at his terrible jokes and winces when he examines his wounds again. The people that come and go through the battlefield are fickle, and Sejun loves being with them, giving them the company they can get before they inevitably die for a just cause. 

He doesn’t expect to see Seungsik again anytime soon, but the doctor is always there when he wakes up after yet another injury that should’ve been fatal, enough that Sejun starts feeling a pang of excitement every time he loses consciousness on the battlefield. 

If Seungsik suspects anything of Sejun’s impossible survival luck, he doesn’t mention it. Sejun enjoys his company, maybe too much, but there’s no way he can stop it now, when his heart is already so accustomed to beating faster near Seungsik. He can love this person, for the moment, until the war takes him away, and if it doesn’t, that will just be more time to spend together. It’s been too long since Sejun allowed himself to feel for anyone in this way, after Chan, but he’s glad he chose this man, with his wide smiles and gentle heart. 

“You have to stop being so reckless,” Seungsik reprimands him, sewing the torn muscles of Sejun’s arm back together. “One day not even your incredible luck will save you.” 

“Then you’ll do it,” Sejun shrugs, without missing a beat. 

“Shut up. Stop being an idiot,” Seungsik huffs, lightly slapping his good arm, just before he sticks out his tongue. “You can’t lose your life with honor if you die in a stupid way, you know.” 

Sejun laughs. That, he can’t argue with.

He doesn’t know when or how this conflict will end, but he finds himself selfishly hoping it won’t be anytime soon. Every moment he shares a meal with Seungsik, steals a squeeze of a hand or a shoulder, exchanges a meaningful glance, is a moment he can almost convince himself that he wants to live again. That he can do this forever. 

He’s happy. He’s so, so happy he could die with no regrets, right now. 

Sejun cannot die. He’s not the one who can. 

He sees it happen before it really does. One of his companions falls on the battlefield. Seungsik, stupid,  _ stupid _ Seungsik, runs with a clear goal in mind. He never makes it. The sword pierces clean through his chest, blood oozing out of the ugly wound and his mouth alike. 

He’s dead before he hits the ground. 

Sejun runs. He runs until he’s holding Seungsik’s limp body in his arms, and then runs more, far away from the battle and everyone else. 

Seungsik is buried with the other corpses, in an unidentifiable pile of putrefying flesh and bones. The rest of them found Sejun soon after the battle was over, too tired to protest, too empty to do anything while they took the doctor’s lifeless body from him to throw it with the others. 

Sejun leaves. He doesn’t know what to tell the others, so he doesn’t say anything. He leaves at night, disappears deep into the woods, and waits for something to change and this nation to die in the heaping fire it deserves. 

Sejun is 224, and he realizes nothing will ever last. 

* * *

_ Joseon, 1573 _

The world has changed, fallen to pieces and settled into a new rhythm. Sejun easily found his place in the new order, smiling and studying his way up the ranks for no reason other than morbid curiosity. Chan would’ve been proud of him when he passed the National Examination. Seungsik, too. Seungsik would’ve wanted him here; it’s the only reason Sejun gave this new order a chance. 

The palace is a living contradiction, fickle and immutable all at once. Sejun learns its ins and outs, the faces of the servants that come and go, of the other nobles, clad in fancy clothes that look like his own; those he wants to avoid, those he wants to charm, and those he wants to keep close. 

He barely pays mind to the children. That’s his mistake. He doesn’t look at the boys running around and being reprimanded for their un-lord-like behavior, learning how to read and write and weave their own path into politics. He never looks at the children, so he is not ready for Jung Subin, nor the way he destroys his heart. 

Sejun really sees him for the first time at a banquet like any other, smiling amicably and bowing with grace to his seniors. His father isn’t hovering around, for what Sejun thinks is the first time ever, and he gets to see the young lord in all his boyish beauty, the way his eyes twinkle under the moonlight and rebel strands of hair fall out of his hat and down cascade down onto his shoulders. 

He doesn’t miss the way Subin pauses when he meets Sejun’s eyes from across the courtyard. Their gazes linger on each other for a fraction of a heartbeat; then, Subin turns his eyes to the nearest person, as if nothing had happened. 

Throughout the night, he keeps stealing glances at Sejun, but doesn’t make an effort to approach him, so much so that Sejun almost becomes convinced his eyes are filled with disdain, instead of the interest he thinks he sees in them. 

He is beautifully, painfully wrong. 

“Is my presence displeasing my lord?” 

Subin doesn’t bother to introduce himself, or show any formalities other than a light bow. Sejun shakes his head almost automatically, his lips moving before he can command them. 

“On the contrary.” 

“On the contrary?” Subin chuckles. This child is  _ arrogant _ , Sejun realizes. It’s a bad quality, in court, yet on him it has an undeniable charm. “Is it pleasing, then?”

“You could say so,” Sejun laughs.

“It’s a very nice night.” Subin smiles, as much interest as he will show, Sejun is sure. “There are few things nicer than a late walk on a full stomach. Would you care to join me?”

And Sejun doesn’t say no, like he should. 

Subin comes into his life like a rainstorm in the summer. Quick, without warning, submerging him in fresh excitement, almost making him remember how it feels to breathe again. He’s overly confident and unbearably shy, wise beyond his years and full of naiveté from his sheltered life. He leaves Sejun poems and takes him on long walks in the gardens, as if he were the older of the two, as if Sejun hadn’t, even to his knowledge, watched him grow. 

Sejun allows the young boy to take him wherever he wants. He’s ridiculously powerless in front of him. 

“I love you,” Subin whispers one late night, feet dangling between the spaces of the bridge railing and just above the water of the garden pond. He whispers it to the fish floating past them, but Sejun recognizes the declaration for what it is. 

“We have to stop seeing each other.” 

Sejun’s heart falls. Down, down into the pond, sinking all the way to its bottom.

“I will soon have to wed,” Subin continues. “We could keep seeing each other, but people already suspect. This isn’t good for either of us.” 

Sejun wants to scream. He wants to cry, to run away, to shake this boy and demand an explanation for why he would ever come into Sejun’s life and take his breath away just to leave like this.

He doesn’t. He watches Subin’s tears fall down and disappear into the water, drop after drop, even as his face screws up with the effort to keep them in. 

“I love you, too,” he whispers, hating himself for how his voice, too, grows thick with unshed tears. He doesn’t move when Subin turns his head without warning and presses their lips together, taking more of Sejun, however he pleases. Sejun indulges him, indulges himself; he kisses back, just a fraction less desperate, more resigned. 

Subin stands up and takes a bow, much deeper than he had the first time they’d met. 

“Farewell.”

Sejun watches him leave, brief like the summer storm he always was. Sejun leaves, too, the next day, telling himself the rest of the nobles must suspect him, by now, seeing how he hasn’t aged a day in the last twenty years. 

Sejun is 410 when he decides he will never again love someone he can lose.

* * *

_ Siberia, 1884 _

  
The carriage is bland. Sejun chose it specifically so he wouldn’t rouse suspicion, and no one would question him. He’s just another traveller heading to Europe for gods-know-what.    
  
The young man with whom he’s sharing the caravan carriage is unlike anything he’d expected, when he chose this path. The people who take this road to head to Europe are old, tired, and think they can brave the weather, but not the perils of people. It’s why Sejun took this cursed path of snow and forest.   
  
Hanse is nothing like the rest of them. Hanse is loud, curious, drunk on life and all the spirits they can find on the road. He wears his foreign glasses skewed on the bridge of his nose, scribbles notes frantically in scrawled handwriting that’s a mix of all the systems Sejun knows, and then some. The bland expanses of frozen wasteland have him glued to the window of their carriage, and no amount of silence on Sejun’s part discourages him from trying to make conversation. 

“Why didn’t you take the Silk Road?” he asks one day, the most obvious question of any he could’ve come up with.    
  
“Too much to see,” Sejun replies, rewarded with a nod. 

“Same, for a part. If I went all the way to Europe through the Silk Road, I might never get there in the first place. You’d just stop everywhere, right? So much to see you’d never be done. Did you know they’re building a train, here? One of those fast carriages on coal, to connect Europe to China. I guess I wanted to try doing it before the train is built. Then when I go back I can take the train,” he grins.

Sejun isn’t taking the Silk Road because he’s too tired to enjoy the journey. The Siberian cold will not kill him, but it will grant him some time to think. It was supposed to be just a journey to the other side of the world, free of any pleasant distractions. 

“Sejun, right? Mister Sejun, what do you think of the French? I’ve read a few things, but I’m not very fluent in their language yet.”

“I’m not familiar,” Sejun whispers. He’s no longer surprised by Hanse’s undeterred enthusiasm, and easily accepts the book the younger man shoves under his nose.

“I find this one particularly fascinating. Candide’s travels, I like them. Like them quite a lot, I have to say. We’ll be stuck in this carriage for a few hours still, would you like to share the read?” 

And how could Sejun have said no, when the man’s enthusiasm seemed warm enough to thaw even the ice around them?

The months carry on. The few towns they stop to are always different. Some shun the foreigners, others welcome them with warm curiosity. Sejun never wanted to care beyond getting some reprieve from sleeping in the wooden carriages of the caravan, but it’s impossible not to notice or fall in love with every new village when Hanse is by his side, commenting on every little habit and admiring every trinket with the enthusiasm of a child and the interest of a scholar. They end up rooming together in inns more often than not, and Sejun grows too used to falling asleep with the boy talking in the background, uncaring of whether Sejun is really listening or not. 

“I find it fascinating, for sure, but there’s inextricable fault in young Werther’s reasoning,” Hanse huffs, one early spring afternoon. “No love is worth the loss of everything life entails.”

Sejun hums. He hasn’t read this book, yet, not nearly as fast as Hanse in consuming literature, but he thinks he can understand. “Have you never been in love?” 

Hanse smiles. It’s a quick, sad tug of the corners of his lips that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Sejun can regret the question before he even hears the answer. 

“I think I have,” the scholar sighs. “She’s long gone.”

“And you do not mourn her?”    


“I haven’t slept a night without remembering her,” Hanse laughs. “If I were to spend the rest of my days in the same town we lived in, I would never be able to forget her. But the world is big, and there’s so much to do. I’ll fall in love again. It doesn’t even have to be a person. I can fall in love with books and monuments. Some exotic European food. Maybe a person, too. Even if that happens, I’ll lose them, or they’ll lose me.”

Sejun knows it. He never expects normal people to know it, as well, but Hanse is nothing like normal people. 

“Why would you fall in love, then?” 

“Why, my good sir. I would’ve thought you of all people would understand that the heart cannot be commanded. Should we try to stop breathing, just because one day our lungs will stop on their own? I would rather have my heart shattered a thousand times, and fondly remember each of them, than know I could’ve been filled with so much joy and sorrow and denied myself the privilege of emotion.”

That, Sejun cannot reply to. Hanse doesn’t seem to expect a reply; the smile has reached his eyes, gleaming again with youthful curiosity and if Sejun finally understood him, what he always calls  _ joie-de-vivre.  _

By the time summer comes again, they arrive in Saint Petersburg, and Sejun realizes, with painful clarity, that the journey he’s undertaken to avoid seeing beauty in the world has been entirely futile. 

“Where will you go, hyung?”

Hanse is shoving clothes back into his baggages without any sort of care. They decided to share an inn room for the last time before separating and heading their own way. Sejun forced himself to stay awake all night and watch Hanse’s face relaxed in peaceful rest, while he still could. He’s too old to care about the moral implications of wanting to preserve a precious view for just a little longer. 

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. 

“Neither do I,” Hanse snickers. “But I will probably head to Germany, then France. Or Italy. I have time. You still don’t know any place you want to visit?”

Germany. France. Italy. Any place where Sejun will fail in his quest to be alone and run from his traitor heart.

"Greece,” he blurts out. 

Hanse’s eyes light up with enthusiasm so genuine Sejun’s heart aches. “That’s the best idea you’ve had this entire journey. It’s a beautiful country. I hope you enjoy it. I’ll send you letters, right?”

Sejun’s too deep into this to deny Hanse anything, or make the wise decision of denying himself the hope of something, so he doesn’t even attempt to. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “I’ll write you back.”

“You better. I’ll be waiting.”

Hanse writes to him. He writes pages and pages, in tiny, scrawled script, folding the papers to make them fit as much as possible within a single envelope. He writes in Korean, in Mandarin, one time, in French. He includes entire passages of books he’s reading, and meticulously reported conversations and debates. Sejun gets lost in the letters, uses up entire bottles of ink to write back. 

When he signs of a letter with a hurried  _ I love you _ , Hanse writes it right back. 

Then, one day, the letters stop. 

Sejun writes them anyway, sending them to the last address he has. He writes them as a habit, without expecting an answer, praying, whenever faith falls on his mind, that Hanse just hates him now. 

It’s another year before he gets a letter back. When he opens the envelope, the handwriting is foreign, elegant loops of French Sejun would struggle to understand, if he cared at all about the content. 

He doesn’t read the letter. 

He’s on his way to Saint Petersburg the next day. Europe is suffocating, much more so than Korea; it’s everywhere, in the language and the literature, and the monuments that breathe with the passion of yet another person Sejun made the mistake of loving. 

Sejun is 721 when he realizes he will never learn. 

* * *

_ Iljegangjeomgi, 1929 _

_ “Must it be, that what makes for man’s happiness becomes the source of his misery? The full, warm feeling of my heart toward living nature, that flowed over me with such bliss, that made the world around me a paradise, has now become an unbearable torturer, a tormenting spirit, that pursues me wherever I turn.” _

Sejun has read the same passage enough times to be able to recite it by heart, and open the well-used copy of the book at the exact page he needs. He’s spent the better part of the last forty years re-reading this one book, laughing to himself. If he had been quicker about it, it could’ve made for an interesting discussion, at the very least. 

The letter is tucked away in the last page. He read it, eventually, in an impulse of dread before he boarded the journey from Saint Petersburg. Tuberculosis. So anti-climatic and appropriate all at once. 

He came back just in time to see his own world warp around him. Treaties and pacts and soldiers lead to yet another name for his country, and Sejun, this time, couldn’t bring himself to feel concerned. The mortals around him are indignated, violated. They fight tooth and claw, cry and martyrize themselves. Sejun wishes he could blame them, or understand them, but truth is, he’s too old to care. 

The boy by his side coughs and turns, shivering from the infection fever he undoubtedly has. 

Sejun winces and goes back to his book. 

He wasn’t remotely heartless enough to ignore the boy that had collapsed in the middle of nowhere, even if Sejun settled in the middle of nowhere to avoid people in the first place. It was pretty clear, from the bruises and cuts, and the thankfully shallow gunshot wounds, that had this boy been found by anyone else, he wouldn’t have been in a good position. Sejun can afford engaging with rebels this minimum amount; he doesn’t want to be tortured, not if he can’t die, but he couldn’t abandon the boy to his death. 

So he sits in his house, re-reading the same book, uselessly trying to lose himself in the passages and ignore the shivering body on his bed.

The boy wakes up the second day, gasping for air. 

“It’s okay,” Sejun murmurs automatically, watching his guest relax at the familiar language. “You’re safe. My name is Lim Sejun. You’re in my house.” 

“Choi Byungchan,” the boy introduces himself, after a brief moment of hesitation. “You’re a doctor?”

Sejun’s lips curve into a smile of their own.

“I used to know one.”

“I have to go,” Byungchan decrees, without any other formalities. “They’re looking for me.”

He doesn’t need to say the rest of it. If they find a rebel here, with Sejun, they’ll both regret it. Sejun might not be able to die, but he will feel every bit of the pain. The wise thing to do would be to kick Byungchan out, maybe after giving him a few supplies to be safer and healthier on his way.

Sejun sighs. 

“They won’t find you here. Stay.”

Byungchan doesn’t stay long, but he stays. He accepts Sejun’s cures and food with grateful smiles, and stops shuffling in discomfort around the third day. He starts talking, too, about his family, his studies, his hometown. 

Byungchan is soft. He’s fragile. The semblance of a shell he’d built around himself when he first woke up cracks immediately, as does his distrust. When he tells of his village, he cries stubborn tears of anger and loss. His bones and skin heal ever so slowly, and there are moments where Sejun thinks he will lose him to the fever. 

Byungchan is resilient. He doesn’t surrender to the fever - nor does he surrender to Sejun, when he inevitably tells him not to leave. 

He’s back the next week, clutching his arm and dripping blood on Sejun’s doorsill. Sejun doesn’t say anything; he simply sighs in relief and moves aside to let him in. 

It’s a cycle he grows familiar with. Byungchan comes to him, bleeding and stubborn, for Sejun to patch up. He stays, does the chores he can physically manage in some kind of obstinate show of gratitude for the food and company Sejun provides him, until he can move again. Then, he’s gone, ignoring Sejun’s increasingly earnest pleads to just stay. 

“What if you don’t make it here, one day?”   


“Then I’ll die with honor,” Byungchan shrugs. “I’ll die fighting for my country. How can you just… stay here? How can you not hate them?” 

“They’ll leave,” Sejun repeats for what feels like too many times to count. “They always do. It’s not worth losing your life over. You can stay here, and wait.” 

Byungchan smiles, weak and insincere, and shakes his head. 

“They won’t leave if we don’t lose our lives over it.” 

He leaves, like he does every time. Something ugly in Sejun’s stomach promises him he will not make it back this time. That Sejun will go out into the woods and find the barely-recognizable remains of this stupidly brave, infuriatingly weak boy. 

Byungchan is back two weeks later, grinning through a cascade of blood covering his face. 

“You could stay here,” Sejun murmurs, again. He knows the sigh Byungchan forces out is one of exasperation, but he still pulls the stitches a little harder in petty revenge. 

“Is my cooking not good for you?” he tries, half-hearted humor that still gets Byungchan smiling. “If you do the cleaning, this could be a great household.”

“Why, Im Sejun,” Byungchan laughs. “Are you trying to lure me into the sins of homosexuality?” 

Sejun’s stomach churns with rejection and guilt. He’s never felt disgusting for his nature, but he should’ve expected Byungchan to-

“I’m joking,” the rebel slaps his arm. “If you still want to after this is over, I’ll move in with you. I’ll do your chores. You can cook. Am I not basically your husband, anyway? Going away to fight and coming back to you to heal?”

“I’ve never been the wife before,” Sejun laughs, shaking away the tears welling up in his eyes. Byungchan shrugs.

“There’s always a first time for everything.” 

This time, when he leaves, he doesn’t come back. 

Sejun waits the usual week, waits another one. He only takes this long when he’s seriously hurt. His medical supplies are out and ready, waiting for the moment Byungchan will stumble through his door, grinning like usual. 

By the third week, he goes out, supplies at hand. He walks through the woods, yells his throat sore until he makes it to the town. He sees the faces of the people Byungchan wants to protect so badly, and of those he is ready to fight to his death. He ignores them, moves forward with a single goal. 

He knows before he sees him. 

There are five bodies tied to wooden poles, in the center of the village. Their faces are already bloated with blood, almost inhuman, but Sejun would distinguish him anywhere. 

He fully expects his heart to crash. He expects himself to get angry, at the world, at Byungchan, at the Japanese, at himself. 

He doesn’t. He turns around and walks back home. 

Sejun is 766, and he’s grown too used to this. 

* * *

_ South Korea, 2020 _

Sejun likes trains. 

Of all the recent changes of the world, so quick he feels like he’s missing most of them, this is one of the those he likes the most. He likes smartphones, even though they’re hard for him to use; he likes washing machines and refrigerators, they make life so much easier. He likes trains a lot, especially these new ones. They’re a quiet, liminal space, bringing him anywhere he wants to be in perfect silence. 

He doesn’t have to talk, on the train, but he can still hold Seungwoo’s hand the way Seungwoo likes him to.

He’s still uncertain of these displays of affection, much more so than Seungwoo himself. His boyfriend likes holding Sejun’s hands in his own, ridiculously big ones and locking their fingers together. He likes watching Netflix and drinking coffee with Sejun, likes listening to Sejun’s stories, the ones he’ll tell. 

Seungwoo likes  _ Sejun. _ He likes him a lot. He never misses the chance to say it, or show it. He buys Sejun pretty things, and is always surprised when Sejun showers him in expensive gifts afterwards - the only good use of all the old money Sejun has accumulated in more than eight centuries. He likes to whisper it between kisses, or murmur it over breakfast. 

He likes Sejun. Maybe, soon, he might even love him. 

Sejun bites his lip, looking away from Seungwoo’s face, relaxed in innocent sleep. 

Every time he realizes how genuine Seungwoo’s heart is, he wants to cry in gratitude. This time, in these days, there is no expectation for their relationship to be a side act to a proper marriage. There is no war, not right now, to take them apart. Any distance that could separate them can be covered with flying machines and these high-speed trains, and the instant mail he can send on his smartphone. They’re blessed. 

This moment is perfect. Sejun’s  _ life _ is perfect. Seungwoo loves him, and Sejun is allowed to love him back. 

Sejun does not. 

Oh, he likes Seungwoo. He might even love him, somewhere in a deeply selfish corner of his heart that keeps him attached to the boy. But Seungwoo will grow old, no matter what. Maybe a war will come, or maybe it will be an epidemy. Maybe, simply, Seungwoo will realize Sejun doesn’t love him the same way, and leave. 

One way or the other, Sejun knows he will lose him. He knows getting into this in the first place was a mistake. He wishes he could be happy, and full of love and hope. He wishes he could tell Seungwoo about his curse, and be by his side as he grows old, enjoy the time they have. He truly wishes he could love him, but the day will come when he will lose him. It is inevitable. An egoistic part of Sejun’s heart keeps him tied, keeps their hands linked, unable to let go just yet and preserve him from a much harsher heartbreak. 

There’s no way to win this, he realizes with a bitter chuckle, squeezing Seungwoo’s hand in his own. 

Sejun is 857 years old, and tired of losing loved ones.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed the story, please consider leaving a comment! It would make my day :')
> 
> UPDATE: back-dated the fic! Hello everyone, thank you for joining me in this journey! Now that the author reveals have happened, feel free to find me on Twitter @lazy_libellula!


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